Katie and Jay

How We Met

Jay and I were introduced by a mutual friend, Candi, when we lived in Tampa Florida back in 2012 – I was just about to move to Boston! They worked together at a bank, and I met her when she inquired about engagement photography about a year prior and we hit it off and became fast friends. On my 24th birthday she started texting me at work to tell me that she found me the perfect guy and was sending me photos of Jay and basically talking to us for each other before she finally gave him my number. The first thing he texted me was Happy Birthday with of bunch of cute emoticons! We met in person a few days later and I thought he didn’t like me after all because he kept turning his head away from me, but he later said he was just incredibly nervous around me and had never felt that way before. For our first date, he took me out to dinner at his friends restaurant and to see Brave because he knew how much I loved Disney. We started officially dating on Friday July 13th 2012!

How He Asked

I am a HUGE Disney fan and Tangled is my favorite movie because it changed me during a bad time in my life. I even worked at Disney World a few years ago as a photographer! When we lived in Florida I bought us annual passes and we went all the time, so Jay knows my love for Disney is immense. We moved to Charleston SC in 2014 but we ended up getting booked for a wedding at Disney for April 2016 and I told him that we were absolutely going for a day while we were there and he asked if our friends Toni (a photographer) & Krissi, who live in Orlando, could come. We were about 5 months out from this trip, but asked them anyway and they took off work to join us on April 6th to Disney.

On April 5th, Jay and I were at Downtown Disney at the World of Disney store when he spotted some matching shirts and asked if I wanted to get them. We are NOT a matching shirts kind of couple and I did think it was a little strange that he wanted them, but I felt like when your guys asks to wear matching shirts…you wear them! (-: So I agreed and we got them.

The next day was the Disney Day. We put on our matching shirts, piled in the car with Toni & Krissi, and off we went to Magic Kingdom! As soon as we got through the turnstiles, Toni asked us to stand in front of the train station for a photo. Jay & I are wedding photographers and we’ve gone to Disney hundreds of times but we have ZERO photos together at Disney. So I was not going to pass up all these pictures of us that Toni was asking to take! We got a ton in front of the castle too as well as on Big Thunder Mountain!

We rode The Haunted Mansion (my favorite ride) and then hit up the gift shop. When we walked out, Jay asked if I wanted some photos in front of Rapunzel’s Tower together and I was all for it. We walked over and Toni got his settings correct, told us to smile at him, and then to look at each other and kiss. This was Jay’s cue that Toni was all set. After he took that photo, all I really remember is Jay taking my hands and stepping back and saying “You know I’ve been wanting to marry you for a long time now…” and he got down on one knee and I covered my eyes and I think I blacked out a bit because I dont remember hearing him say anything else! Luckily, we have photos AND a video (but you can only hear other guests being excited about the proposal!). Krissi shot the video on her iPhone. For being a wedding photographer, Im amazed that I missed all of the signs that were given to me!